Meet the $3.14M Bugatti Veyron Legend Ettore Bugatti

There's an elephant inside.

Most Read

It's easy to forget that a Veyron 16.4 Grand Sport Vitesse packs 1200 hp and 1106 lb-ft of torque when just a few months ago the buzz was that brand new Veyrons were piling up, waiting for buyers. It's also easy to forget that after the parade of five other Legends editions Veyrons, there was a final one waiting in the wings. Perhaps it was inevitable that it would honor the company's largest legend, Ettore Bugatti himself. Does it do justice to the man?

That's up to three buyers who can scratch together the $3,140,000 asking price to obtain what is essentially a Grand Sport Vitesse with an exterior partially covered in clear-coated aluminum. It's slathered over the side blades, hood, mirrors, and doors. The paint is a dark blue, which is quite handsome, complemented with blue-finished exposed carbon fiber accents. The exclusive alloy wheels claim a (very loose) connection to the eight-spoke wheels that featured on some of Bugatti's most stunning 1920s race cars. And as you'd expect, the interior is a riot of very expensive leather covering nearly every conceivable surface; the inconceivable ones are done up in exposed, blue-tinted carbon fiber.

What really sets the Ettore Bugatti edition apart from its Legends brethren is the platinum-plated sculpture of an elephant embedded in carbon fiber between the front thrones. In case the reference isn't immediately obvious, the elephant was the hood ornament on what was the wildest Bugatti before WWII: the Type 41 Royale, at 21 feet long the largest car ever made when it debuted in 1927. It was indeed a dancing elephant; the sculpture, created by Ettore's brother Rembrandt, stood on the radiator cap.

Other than the materials and that elephant, the recipe isn't all that much different from the other Legends flavors. You have to wonder what Ettore himself would thing of this dynamically-unmodified tribute. Judge for yourself (and against the other five Legends models) at Monterrey's exclusive The Quail event on August 15.